Cold snap hits Marmara region after unseasonable warmth
ISTANBUL
Amid consecutive severe storm warnings issued by meteorologists for the Marmara Region, snowfall finally began in the elevated areas of the Thrace region on Jan. 13.
Temperatures plummeted to 0 degrees Celsius in Edirne, Kırklareli and Tekirdağ. While the nocturnal snowfall in urban centers subsided by morning on Jan. 13, forecasts suggest a similar precipitation pattern might affect Istanbul.
The snowy conditions across the nation’s most populous region have been attributed to a cold air system advancing from the Balkans.
In Istanbul, precipitation is anticipated to persist throughout the week, occasionally intensifying, with authorities urging vigilance against potential adversities.
This abrupt transition to cold and mixed precipitation in Istanbul follows an unseasonably warm week.
“Temperatures in Istanbul reached as high as 17-18 degrees, and in some northern districts, even 20 degrees,” prominent meteorologist Orhan Şen remarked.
“A cold air mass arrived from the Balkans on Jan. 12, influencing the Marmara Region but sparing Anatolia. Consequently, snowfall will be predominantly confined to Marmara,” Şen said, further elaborating that this system is unlikely to deliver substantial snowfall to Istanbul’s urban core.
According to meteorological data, December 2024 saw a nationwide average temperature increase of 1.3 degrees, while the Mediterranean region recorded the heaviest rainfall in 15 years.
Conversely, Southeastern Anatolia experienced a 53 percent decline in precipitation. Historical rainfall benchmarks were shattered in several locales: Antalya and Burdur observed their most substantial December rainfall in 15 years; Isparta and Muğla in 12 years; and the Aegean region in a decade.
‘Record heat of 2024 may spell end of climate targets by 2028’
Meanwhile, Professor Dr. Levent Kurnaz, the director of Boğaziçi University’s Climate Change and Policy Research Center, warned that the Paris Agreement’s ambition to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels within a decade is likely to falter by 2028.
Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an entity of the European Union, revealed that the global average temperature for 2024 reached 15.10 degrees, surpassing the 1991-2020 baseline by 0.72 degrees and 2023’s average.
This made 2024 the warmest year on record since 1850. Additionally, it became the first year in which global temperatures surpassed the 1.5-degree threshold set in the Paris Agreement. The decade from 2015 to 2024 now constitutes the 10 warmest years on record. Globally, 2024 was the hottest year across all continental regions except Antarctica and Australia, with record-breaking temperatures observed in the North Atlantic, Indian and Western Pacific oceans.